Sea Power: ‘I can often hear my parents’ voices in the songs’

During its making they lost first their father, Ronald, in 2017 and then their mother, Margaret, two and a half years later.

Speaking via Zoom, Jan reflects that writing and recording “probably was” a way of processing their loss. “I didn’t consciously try to do that but there are a couple of direct references. There’s a song which references my dad,” he says.

“Other than that, I did find that it was hard to differentiate between that and being in lockdown. The two things together were a pretty strange combination. In the first lockdown it felt so quiet when you were only allowed out once a day and everything slowed down, it felt like an old fashioned Sunday when everything used to close. It was an otherworldly feeling these days when you’re so used to the world being so hectic.

“Then I found myself thinking about childhood and how do you become the person you are, end up in the house you’re in, and that kind of thing. Thinking about people and what’s important. They’re all sort of clichés but they’re very true at the same time, and feeling quite emotional in bursts, and I think that came out in the album.

“Although my brother doesn’t give much away about what his songs are about, I can often hear my parents’ voices in them sometimes in parts of his words. I definitely think he was going through a similar process.”

Two Fingers is the song most obviously influenced by the Wilkinsons’ father but it was also inspired by a series on the American fantasy writer HP Lovecraft and the films of David Lynch. “It’s a kind of mysterious song which doesn’t give everything away,” says Jan. “It’s sort of dubious and heads down parallel roads simultaneously. It’s a bit dark but at the end of the day pretty optimistic, it’s like the ethereal pop song in a lot of ways.

“I’m a big fan of the producer Joe Meek, who did Telstar. I often think about him now and again and I really like his approach to what were sometimes massive hits but from this really strange place, a secret bedroom with strange goings-on, Ouija boards and speed, and at the same time he could be working with these huge stars and big labels and occasionally coming out on top but in the end not so much. I find that incredibly interesting and that was definitely an influence.”

Ronald Wilkinson also figures in the video for Lakeland Echo, a song named after the Cumbrian newspaper that Jan, Neil and their brother Roy, now a music journalist, used to deliver when they were young. Jan says his father “attempted to have a massive influence” on the band, “insistently and slightly obsessively”.

“I enjoyed the fact that it almost gave him a new lease of life in some ways for quite a large part of the end of his life,” he says. “He not only got into us but he got into all sorts of alternative music – Sonic Youth and grunge and Butthole Surfers and Julian Cope – because he wanted to understand the world that we had one foot in as a reference point, so he’d be reading books about bands that I knew a bit about and had listened to and he’d be asking weird questions.”

Last year when the band dropped the word ‘British’ from their name they explained their decision in an essay for The Guardian. Today, Jan says they had come to feel association with Britishness no longer represented their own view of the band. “I think if you really knew us, if you were aware of music and some of our songwriting ideas, then I think it was pretty reasonable, but it seemed like it could easily be a barrier or misunderstood on a glancing way from people who don’t know what you do then hear your music or see a T-shirt or a poster,” he says.

“It wasn’t that big a deal, we just felt a bit awkward. I’d been thinking about changing it and actually bringing it up to the band for about ten years and it had never gone down that well because it’s quite a big thing. I mean, it is a big thing and it isn’t, rappers change their names all the time. But it felt a bit awkward and a potential barrier and it didn’t really reflect what I felt about the new songs. Listening to everyone’s music together, it seemed a bit more open, a bit more emotional and friendlier and it seemed worth it just to not get confused with any k***heads.”

Everything Was Forever is out now. Sea Power play at The Leadmill, Sheffield on April 21. seapowerband.com